Saturday, July 22, 2006

A Day of Rest from Media-Bashing

Journalist Arrested in Gambia
Two Journalists Murdered in Angola
Attacks on Journalists in Pakistan
Iraq Deadliest Place for Journalists in 25 Years
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3 comments:

Rice Farmer said...

Although not apropos of murdering journalists, here is an interesting sign of the times in Japan.

It's often said that the three elements of ecological meltdown, economic collapse, and peak oil are coming together, and this month's issue of a Japanese magazine I get has an article that reminded me of this. It's about hard times for Japan's tuna fishing industry, and begins with the speculation that tuna may disappear from Japanese dinner tables in the near future. Given the Japanese love of tuna, this is a matter of significant proportions, and the day that tuna slips off the menu -- whenever it comes -- is already being called "X-Day."

Specifically what's happening is that Japanese tuna fishing enterprises, which are based mainly in a port city called Kesennuma, are going belly-up because of two factors: high fuel prices and collapsing tuna stocks. In turn, this is becoming another drag on the economy.

A year and a half ago the local newspaper published a letter of mine in which I predicted, among other things, that rising bunker fuel prices will eventually begin driving fishing enterprises out of business. And now it is coming true.

As I mentioned above, the Japanese really love tuna, so when X-Day comes, it's going to have a big psychological impact as well, and bad vibes are always bad for the stock market and the economy as a whole.

And this is just the beginning. Hang onto your hats.

11:41 PM
Satyagraha said...

Perhaps one of the more pleasant surprises in the media is the recent attenion to the 9-11 truth movement (thanks in part to Charlie Sheen). However, there is a dark side here.

9-11 skeptics are finally getting their 15 minutes of fame, but if they were really paranoid (and less subject to flattery) they might suspect that the timing of their exposure is calculated to keep those they consider the perpetrators of 9-11 in power.

http://discerndiscerndiscern.blogspot.com/

11:51 PM
Rice Farmer said...

Yes, the attention to 9/11 is encouraging, but I too can't help but wonder what's really going on here.

One very significant characteristic of these presentations is that nearly everyone is chasing after the physical evidence, primarily the collapse of the WTC towers. While I think that Professor Jones is most likely right, he and other "experts" for the 9/11 truth movement face a well-nigh insurmountable challenge: the government will mobilize an equal or greater number of tax-paid "experts" who will refute the 9/11 experts, and you end up with a situation where it's one expert's word against that of another. It turns into an endless argument. I can't help thinking that, at the opportune moment, the neocons will produce their own phalanx of experts, who wil be given lots of mainstream media exposure.

Most of the videos out there also take the physical-evidence approach. One that notably does not is "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime," whose approach is circumstantial evidence. While the findings of experts on physical evidence are vulnerable to refutation by other experts, one cannot refute known facts about who did what, and if you have enough known facts that point in the right direction -- as we do in the case of 9/11 -- a powerful case can be made. In my opinion, "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime" makes a much more convincing case than the much-lauded "Loose Change." Any many court cases have been won on the strength of circumstantial evidence.

7:50 PM

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